Homemade dinner rolls

We do like baking, and the kids eat bread.  My grandfather was a renowned baker, and my older son is named after him.  We used to make challahs often (as in this old photo), and stopped for a while.

Last week, my younger son and I made homemade dinner rolls with this recipe, and they were quite good (or so I hear).  It was fun for the kids to roll the dough into one inch balls, and stuff three per cup.  We changed the recipe by chopping fresh rosemary and putting it on top of the rolls before baking.  We also used coconut milk instead of cow's milk, and it turned out fine.

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Recipe: Banana "Ice Cream"

This "ice cream" was inspired by the cookbook Well Fed 2, which, like the original Well Fed, is a wellspring of recipes and inspiration.  The kids like to make it, or eat it (or both!).  It is good both freshly made, as soft serve, or we freeze any leftovers in our popsicle molds, or if those are full, in little cups with popsicle sticks in them.

3 frozen bananas (freeze after they get brown spots on them)

4-6 fresh pastured egg yolks

1 T vanilla

1/4 cup raw milk

Combine all in food processor.  Serve with soaked and dehydrated pecans (3 per serving).

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Kids' Cooking: Prairie Sushi

We stole this from Ree Drummond's show, but it's really great.  These are basically a sandwich wrap but sliced to imitate sushi.

It's a tortilla with cream cheese spread on it and fresh parsley and basil sprinkled over that.  Then, across the middle, is lunchmeat and matchsticks of carrots and cucumber.

This is rolled up tight then sliced into one inch (or so) thick segments and served flat.

Mmmmmm....



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Kids' Cooking: Making Pancake Batter from Scratch

We have been making these pancakes a lot, and my older son, who is in K, wanted me to write out the recipe so he could make the batter.

Now they can make these from start to finish, with only a little hovering by a grown-up.

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Recipe: Dark Chocolate Covered Almonds with Salt

1 bar baking chocolate

2 T honey

1/4 c coconut oil

3/4 c soaked and dehydrated almonds

2 t sea salt

Melt chocolate in a double boiler.  Add coconut oil and honey.  Stir to combine.

Either dip the almonds in the chocolate and lay them on a parchment paper sheet, or add them to the chocolate and pour it out together.  Sprinkle salt.

Freeze until solid, about an hour.

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Sauerkraut is Done

Our sauerkraut is done! The DIY crock rocks worked great.

Sauerkraut

modified from Wild Fermentation by Sandor Katz

5 pounds cabbage
3 tablespoons sea salt


Chop or grate cabbage.  Place into 1 gallon fermentation crock (or food grade plastic bucket), sprinkling in salt by layers.  Push with fist as layering.  Cover with plate or lid that fits snugly inside crock.  Weight it down, then cover with a cloth. Press it down as often as you think of it over the next 24 hours, or until brine comes above lid.


Leave it to ferment, checking it every day or two to make sure lid is submerged and to taste it.  Should be ready in 1 to 4 weeks.  Store in refrigerator. Pin It

DIY Vanilla Extract

When faced with my husband's question of why, exactly, I was making our own vanilla, the only answer I could come up with at the time was that I could.

A better answer would have been to explain to him that I like the idea of going back as many steps as possible when making food from scratch, and that going back and making as much as possible at home increases the transparency of what is in the food and makes it simpler for your body to digest.

Hm.

Anyway, I found a few recipes (Caveman Keto and The Prairie Homestead) and they basically seemed the same.  

Slice a vanilla bean in half, put it into a glass bottle, and pour vodka or bourbon over it and let it sit.  Times vary from 6 weeks to 6 months in the recipes; I will smell mine at 6 weeks and see.  We chose bourbon because we are used to using bourbon vanilla and, if faced with any leftover, we prefer bourbon to vodka.

  Label it if you want. Shake it every so often.  

Looks like when it is ready, you can leave the used bean in there and re-fill it with alcohol and let it sit again (and re-use the bean indefinitely).  Or take the bean out and give the bean a second life in your sugar storage bin making vanilla sugar.


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Smoothie Help

 

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Making Holiday Cookies w Kids (+ Recipe- Gluten Free, Sugar Free)

 

This is our favorite gluten-free, sugar-free kids' spritz cookie recipe.  It is modified from the recipe on the blog Nourished Kitchen for Gingerbread Spritz Cookies.  My kids love using a rolling pin and cookie cutters, and they love the flavors in this recipe.

• 3 cups almond flour, plus extra for flouring your working surface
• 1/2 cup honey, optional
• 5 eggs, beaten
• 1 teaspoon sea salt
• 3 tablespoons ground ginger
• 1 tablespoon cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp grated nutmeg
• 1/4 tsp ground cloves

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
2. Beat almond flour, honey, eggs, salt, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves together to form dough.
3. Flour your working surface and rolling pin. Spread the dough onto your work surface and roll until about 1/4-inch thick. Cut out with a cookie cutters. Place onto a parchment-lined baking sheet and bake until just browned at the edges – twelve to fifteen minutes. 
4. Transfer to a cooling rack. Store in an airtight container.

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Book Review: Tartine Bread

I recently got a sourdough starter from someone in town, who got it from Victoria Bakery in San Francisco and it is a 2000.  She told me the story of how the bakery makes a new starter every year, and they name them by the year.  She also told me about the book Tartine Bread, and about how amazing their country loaf tastes.

So I started reading the book, which is so much more than a sourdough recipe.  It is a delightful story of the author's journey to find the country loaf recipe as an apprentice baker, and a detailed explanation of sourdough making and the various steps and stages involved in making his loaf.  It expands into variations of his loaf, then into variations of types of loaves you can make using sourdough to ferment your dough, not all of which are actually sour.  The photos are beautiful and helpful, although on the Kindle, their placement isn't right where I want them to be all of the time (this is a frequent Kindle complaint of mine for photos and charts, though).  The author owns a restaurant in San Francisco, so that also makes it that much more interesting.

So I made a loaf the other day.  It took a LOT longer than expected (nearly two days), but he mentions to watch your dough and pay attention to it more than the specified times.  It is fairly cool in our house (low 60s), so I think that was the issue.  I also tried to proof the dough in the oven with a pot of boiling water, and it didn't really warm it until we used the oven, then put it back into the now-warm oven.  Next time, I will do it this way.


The holes in it weren't as large as I expected, but I think it's a learning curve.  It was tasty, and the troops all ate it-- slathered in butter.

I used the other half of the dough for pizza and it was a failure.  It was too thick and didn't cook through.  I think I can fix that by bringing it to room temperature before baking it (like he says), and stretching it thinner.

All in all, I am excited to see where this sourdough home bread making goes.  There is such satisfaction in baking your own bread, and the health benefits of properly fermenting the dough make it easier on the digestive system.  Tartine Bread is a lovely book to use as a guide.

   

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Book Review: Home Cheese Making by Ricki Carroll

We had a bunch of raw milk that was a couple of days away from expiring, so we had to do something with it.  I had recently made raw yogurt, so wanted to try something different.

I have Ricki Carroll's tantalizing cookbook Home Cheese Making.  The book itself is good.  It's a nice read, tells a good story, and made me want to make cheese at home.  This was AGES ago, when I first got it, then I never was inspired to actually get the extra ingredients for home cheese making.

But now I had some milk and didn't want to make yogurt.  I searched the cookbook for recipes that didn't require any extra and unusual ingredients.  I settled on Paneer, which is Indian Farmer Cheese, and the Mexican Farmer Cheese.  The Indian recipe used lemon juice after heating the milk, and the Mexican recipe used apple cider vinegar.  They both ended up with a similar consistency and non-meltable characteristic, as well as tons of whey left over.  I liked the flavor of the Indian cheese slightly better, though the Mexican one was good in soup.

With the leftover whey, I tried making ricotta and it failed.  I also made her Italian whey bread and it was tasty.  I used a gluten-free flour mix from Trader Joe's, so that probably explains why it was so crumbly.  The kids loved making it, though.



This was entertaining, but I don't think I will be making cheese again anytime soon.  I stand by yogurt as the easiest use of about-to-expire milk.  It was far too much effort for the small amount of cheese made, and it wasn't awesome in flavor.

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Recipe: Vanilla Ice Cream without an Ice Cream Maker

We are big fans of vanilla ice cream (homemade with raw cream).  But sometimes, the kids want it right away the the ice cream maker inside hasn't been in the freezer long enough... so...

Step 1: whip raw cream (see proportions in original recipe)
Step 2: add vanilla and honey, if using


Step 3: portion into whatever containers you are freezing it in (we use 1 cup like these) - start with one little dollop for initial mixing
Step 4: add egg yolk into each container and mix

Step 5: add more whipped cream and mix

Step 6: add tiny pinch of salt and mix

Step 7: freeze then enjoy!

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Recipe: Tuna (and Leftover Salmon) Salad Bowls

 

Tuna/ Salmon Salad
3 cans tuna fish, rinsed and drained (can replace as many with as much leftover fish you had; we had half a fillet of salmon)
1/4 cup homemade olive oil mayonnaise
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
pinch sea salt, or to taste
1/8 cup shredded red cabbage
1/4 red onion, shredded or diced
1 hard boiled egg, chopped
2 carrots, shredded
1 cucumber, chopped small

The Bowl
4 tomatoes
head lettuce
1 lb green beans, steamed then plunged into cold water

Slice tomato wedges to lay around each bowl.  Fill in the middle and between the wedges with lettuce (we used butter lettuce).  Spoon the tuna salad in the middle.  Layer the green beans around the outside ("like electrical wires," my 5-year old said).

Enjoy!

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Kids' Cooking: Baked Zucchini with Bacon

We grew the HUGEST zucchini we have ever grown and harvested it this week.

What did the little guy want to do with it?  Fork it and bake it.  With bacon for flavor.
FYI: at 350 for 40 minutes.

He also made a skewer of tomatoes and a tomatillo and made a lovely platter with some steamed green beans.

What did he end up eating?  Raw milk, steamed green beans, bacon, and a banana.  But he did want to make sure nobody else eats that huge zucchini just yet; he wants it later this week.  We shall see about that.

 

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Recipe: Carrot Coleslaw

 

Carrot Coleslaw

Salad:
1 head green cabbage, shredded by your helper
1 lb carrots, shredded by your helper
1 bunch green onions, sliced on a bias
3 pieces celery, sliced on a bias
1/2 cup raisins
1/2 cup soaked and dehydrated almonds, sliced (can sub with regular almonds)
1/3 bunch parsley, diced

Dressing:
1/4 cup homemade olive oil mayo (can sub with yogurt)
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 T lemon juice
1 t. salt
2 t. mustard

Mix salad ingredients in large bowl.  Mix dressing ingredients in small bowl. Can dress salad in advance.

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Primal Lasagne

I don't do a lot of imitating pasta dishes, but my son had a lasagna at a restaurant the other day and went crazy for it.  So I wanted to try one at home.

First, the layers:
1. The sauce (tomatoes, peppers, basil, stock, onion, garlic)
2. The meat (ground grass fed beef 85%, kale)
3. Eggplant "pasta" (Peeled and thinly sliced eggplant sauteed in coconut oil until translucent)
4. Goat cheese (in dollops)- you could skip this

 

I got 3 rounds of each layer in, starting with sauce and ending with the cheese.  Note I also didn't salt it because my peppers in the sauce were poblanos and I didn't want to scare the kids away with too too much seasoning.

This cooked for 45 minutes at 350.

 

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Fresh Clams in White Wine Butter Sauce

My kids got really into making these. Plus, they ended up SO tasty.



2 lb fresh clams (1 lb per person, plan accordingly)
3 T butter
3 cloves garlic, chopped
3 T chopped parsley
1/2 cup white wine

1. Clean clams (rinse all the sand out). Only use the closed clams.
2. Melt butter in dutch oven or similar.
3. Add garlic and wine. Bring to a boil.
4. Add clams. Cover.
5. Check often and stir until they open, which is about 5-7 minutes. Discard any which haven't opened.
6. Sprinkle parsley on top.
7. Eat with something to dip into the (delicious and salty) broth-- like broccoli or crusty bread.

 

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Birthday Cake Substitute: Baked Apples (Gluten Free, Sugar Free, Paleo/ Primal, WAP, Traditional Foods)

                

Was this five years ago already?  Has it only been five years?

My older son is five! Look at how big he is!

We have had an assortment of non-traditional sugar free birthday cakes (like watermelon cake, banana bread cake, coconut flour cake with whipped cream, and strawberry pie with whipped cream) - plus the ones I didn't blog about.

This time, most of what was served actually got eaten!

Baked Apples (makes 1 tray)

12 apples
1 cup diced walnuts
1/3 cup raisins
1 T cinnamon
1/4 t. sea salt
2 T butter
1/2 qt. bone broth/ beef stock

Preheat oven to 350. Core the apples, but do it wider at the top than the bottom, as if you are taking a cone out of the middle.  Set them in the baking dish.

In a small bowl, mix the walnuts, raisins, cinnamon, and salt.  Stuff this into the apples.  Put any extra around the apples in the dish.

Dot each apple with a dab of butter in the middle.

Pour the broth around the apples.  It should be about an inch or more up the sides of the apples.

Bake at 350 for an hour and a half to two hours.  Can be served hot, cold, or room temperature.

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Individual Strawberry Pies - Crustless

This is a mini version of this pie.  The kids love the gummies, and individual ramekins, so this is a nice extension of both for them.

Here it is with shipped cream on top.

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Recipe: Magic Mini Meatloves (aka Scotch Eggs)

Ingredients:
12 hard boiled eggs, peeled
1 bunch turnips, grated
1/2 cup cheese, grated
4 eggs
1 bunch spinach, grated
1.5 lb. ground beef
1 t. salt

Procedure:
1. Boil and peel eggs
2. Mix ground beef, eggs, spinach, turnips, eggs, and salt
3. Cover each egg with beef mixture. Place into muffin cups or onto cookie sheet.
4. Bake at 350 degrees for 30-40 minutes, or until beef is cooked.
5. Enjoy the meatloves with the surprise inside each one!

 

 

 

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